Trademarked Generic Names.

[gogeorge]

Can generic names such as roses, pizza be trademarked?

There are discount stores such as roses that compete with Wallmart. Roses.com is owned by FTD. Then you had the case of Dominos pizza vs. Dominos Sugar. Then there is the game dominoes.

The chain store name and the generic flower name are exactly the same.

 

[Dave Zan]

Can? Yes?

Will? It depends on how the word will be used, so check your TM office.

For common law trademarks, I don't really know.

 

[dtobias]

If something's truly generic, then you can't trademark it, at least not for the thing that it's generic for. However, a word that is generic in one context can be a trademark in another, like "apple", which is generic for fruit and trademarked for computers. A trademark might also belong to different companies in different product areas, like Apple Computer vs. Apple Records.

 

[draqon]

the information youve received in this thread so far is correct. there are different types of trademarks, and each has a different strength. For example, the strongest type of mark is fanciful trademarks such as ZipZopZoo. Nonsense words such as this are given strong protection. Less strong are arbitrary words, such as Apple, which are unrelated to the field of commerce they are used in. The least strong, and usually untrademarkable, are descriptive terms like attempting to sell fruit with the trademark Bananas.